1. Field of the Invention
Aspects relate to handover in a mobile communication system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method that can generate handover information based on a signal received from a terminal, and broadcast the generated handover information to a particular region using beamforming.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a mobile communication system divides the entire service providing area into a plurality of cells. A base station is provided in each of the plurality of cells to provide a service to terminals that are located in each of the cells.
A terminal that desires to use a service over the mobile communication system may communicate with the base station installed in each of the cells to use a desired service.
If a terminal uses a service using a particular base station and then moves to another cell in which another base station provides a service, the terminal can be handed over from the particular base station to the other base station and keep using the service.
To access another base station during communication with a currently accessing particular base station, the terminal must receive information about the other base station from the currently accessing particular base station.
The terminal receives from the particular base station information about at least one base station neighboring to the currently accessing particular base station. The terminal receives a reference signal from at least one other base station during communication with the particular base station, and compares the strength of the reference signal with another reference signal received from the particular base station. When the reference signal strength received from the other base station neighboring to the particular base station is greater than the reference signal strength received from the particular base station, the terminal performs a handover procedure to the other base station with a greater reference signal strength.
A terminal that is located in a particular region of a particular base station may be handed over to a base station associated with the particular region among a plurality of base stations neighboring to the particular base station. However, according to a conventional art, the terminal must receive information about all the base stations neighboring to the particular base station. Since the terminal needs to search all the neighboring base stations and receive reference signals from all the neighboring base stations, the terminal may consume a great amount of battery and also may spend unnecessarily long handover time.